Thursday, October 1, 2015

1 October 2015 A.D. An Evangelical Critique of Contemporary Worship

1 October 2015 A.D. An
Evangelical Critique of Contemporary Worship

Gene
Veith is Professor of Literature at Patrick Henry College, the Director of the
Cranach Institute at Concordia Theological Seminary, a columnist for World
Magazine and TableTalk, and the author of 18 books on different facets of
Christianity & Culture.

D. H. Williams, a theology professor at Baylor, offers a searching
critique of contemporary worship as practiced in the typical megachurch,
published in Christianity Today, no less. You need to read it all, but
here is the opening description of the service:

On a recent Sunday, I
found myself visiting a Protestant megachurch. Entering the “worship center”
was eerily similar to being ushered down the aisle of a movie theater: floor
lighting, padded chairs, visual effects shown on two large screens, and music
over the speaker system.

A band appeared on
stage to begin the service with live music. It was dark, and I thought I heard
the audience singing along, but it was impossible to tell. And although I was
seated in the front row, I sensed that the congregation was almost superfluous
to the activity on stage. As in most forms of entertainment, the audience
functioned as passive onlookers, participating only in an unseen, intensely
personal way.

While the band played,
song lyrics flashed across the two big screens, with words like great, God, and
high figuring prominently. The musical performance was outstanding, even if the
vocabulary was extremely limited. If the songs aimed at an emotional response,
they were probably successful, but like so much contemporary worship music,
they lacked any element of substantive teaching.

Immediately after the
singing, without any announcement, much less Paul’s words of institution (1
Cor. 11:23-26), the elements of the Lord’s Supper were hurriedly handed around.
Again, I was amazed at the blandly efficient nature of this activity. We could
have been passing pretzels and soda pop. No one offered any guidance whatsoever
on the sharing of this critical ordinance or sacrament. It seemed a strictly
vertical encounter between each individual and God.

Next came the sermon,
offered by a capable person who worked very hard to relate while teaching some
biblical content. A simple outline appeared on the screen so that we could
follow the train of thought. So did the relevant Bible passages, lest anyone
could not find them in an actual Bible. I noticed that the illustrations came
almost solely from popular movies and television. Then the service ended as
abruptly as it began, with a few announcements over the speakers and a cordial
“thank you” to the congregation. No benediction or closing prayer—not even a
person to give it. The house lights came on, and it was time to leave.